Happy π Day! The following bugs have been fixed:
1) There are several bugs involving the rendering of large images.
First of all, please note that images in Fractal Domains are limited to a maximum size of 32,767 x 32,767. This is pretty big; images larger that this are not supported directly in Fractal Domains 2.0, although larger images can be generated piecemeal using the "Tiling" command.
Given this restriction the followng bugs were fixed:
a) Spool files were not correctly generated when the size went over 2GB, even when the image size was within the correct bounds. The program would freeze when this limit was exceeded.
b) Similarly, image files in JPEG, PNG and TIFF format were not guaranteed to be generated correctly for large file sizes.
2) There were several bugs related to the Color Map Editor which could cause visual anomalies and crashing, especially when editing certain color maps from the predefined menu selections.
These bugs have all been fixed.
Changed the behavior when opening Fractal Domains files using "Open..." in the File dialog.
In the process of making the changes for 2.0.7 (see below for details), a bug was introduced: the ability to open files created by versions of Fractal Domains previous to 2.0 was lost. For the benefit of users (like me!) who still have some pre-2.0 format files laying about, the ability to open these files has been restored.
Changed the behavior when opening Fractal Domains files using "Open..." in the File dialog.
Previously, the files displayed were filtered according to Finder information that tagged each file. This is a technique left over from pre-OS X days, since OS X applications generally do the same thing by using an explicit extension in the file name.
The Finder tagging can be lost in some situations (such as moving the documents to a non-Mac file system and then back again.) In these cases Fractal Domains would simply not allow the files to be opened.
This problem is now circumvented by allowing any files at all to be opened via the "Open..." dialog. If a non-Fractal Domains document is opened, Fractal Domains will detect this and will not allow the file to be opened.
Corrected a minor bug. Registration number could only be entered by copy/paste -- typing didn't work because the edit field didn't allow hyphens, which are part of the reg code. This has been corrected; registration numbers can now be typed as well as pasted.
Corrected a bug introduced in 2.0.4: TIFF images weren't saved correctly when running on PowerPC Macs.
A bug prevented an image file from being saved if an image file of the same name had been previously saved in the same session. Fractal Domains would ask if the file was to be replaced, but would not actually replace it. This has been fixed. Also, possible problems with TIFF image saving have been fixed.
Fixed bug that caused the program to hang when attempting to autosave image files after rendering (affected JPEG, PNG and TIFF autosave).
Fixed bug that sometimes caused crashes when moving the mouse while previewing Julia images in the Preview window.
There was a bug in 2.0 that prevented Fractal Domains from running under OS X 10.2.8. This has been fixed in version 2.0.1.
Happy New Year! As we are entering 2007, Fractal Domains ends almost three years of being stuck at 2.0b5 and finally exits beta status. However, this is not as minor a change as might be suggested by the mere dropping of "b5." Although Fractal Domains 2.0 is identical functionally to 2.0b5, there are substantial changes under the hood.
First of all, it is now a Universal application, so it will run much more quickly on Intel based Macs. For a computation-intensive program such as Fractal Domains, native execution is especially important.
Second, the program is now multithreaded to take full advantage of multiple processors. Fractal Domains detects the number of processors/cores present and creates a computation thread for each CPU. More discussion of the performance improvements can be found on the Benchmarks page.
Originally, these features were planned for the rewrite of Fractal Domains (Fractal Domains X) that I have been working on, but as that project has proved to be more ambitious than I originally planned, I decided it would not be a good idea to wait until that project is completed to have a Universal version of Fractal Domains.
The Fractal Domains web site had not been upgraded for a long time, and the pages in the Fractal of the Week archive in particular had become a hodgepodge of styles from different points in the site's evolution, with different backgrounds and menu styles, obsolete banner code, etc.
At great effort the entire content of the site has been transferred to RapidWeaver, with some reorganization especially in the gallery section. I hope you find this site more attractive and usable as a result.
Corrected a bug that sometimes caused the title bar and/or the size box to be placed off screen, out of reach of the mouse.
Yet more color map bugs fixed, and a first draft of the 2.0 manual is included in PDF format.
I am trying to get 2.0 in shape to leave beta status, so I can clear the decks for Fractal Domains X development. I would appreciate it if anybody with bugs to report would write to me at support@fractaldomains.com right away so I can get them fixed. This is going to be the last version of Fractal Domains that will run under Mac OS 9, so I'd like to leave it in good shape.
